You want to see “blowback” in action? That's easy enough. All you need is a vague sense of how Google Search works. Then type into it phrases like “warmest years,” “rising sea levels,” “melting ice,” “lengthening wildfire season,” or “future climate refugees,” and you’ll find yourself immersed in the grimmest of blowback universes. It’s a …
Continue reading The Age of Unintended Consequences
Back in the early 1990s, I interviewed John Marks, author ofSearch for the Manchurian Candidate. This was the book (1979) that helped expose the existence and range of the infamous CIA MKULTRA program. Marks related the following facts to me. He had originally filed many Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests for documents connected to the …
Continue reading How the CIA Hid Their MKULTRA Mind-Control Program
Recent inter-communal riots in Sri Lanka have highlighted the problem of religious extremism, particularly among Asia’s Buddhist population. But the Buddhist nationalist point of view has been largely ignored in favour of a discourse which demonises Buddhists as aggressors and portrays Muslims as innocent victims. The reality is far more complex. Part I A state …
Continue reading Sri Lanka’s Religious Violence and the US Pivot to Asia
Who is the real Mike Pompeo and what does he really think about Russia, Iran, Afghanistan or Syria? Moscow has been noticeably reticent about US President Donald Trump’s dismissal last week of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and his replacement with Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief Pompeo. This is curious considering how often Trump’s perceived …
Continue reading Trump’s Foreign Policy Enters New Uncertain Phase
There has been a revolution in the shady world of US espionage after Donald Trump named a woman as CIA head for the first time. RT looks at the top spy, who rights activists accused of overseeing torture and demanded her arrest. Gina Haspel, born October 1, 1956 was a deputy CIA director before becoming …
Continue reading Torture Master? Who is Gina Haspel, 1st Woman to Head CIA
In a shocking display of relative independence from the post-Operation Mockingbird control of the media by the Central Intelligence Agency, a recent article in The New York Times broke with current conventional pack journalism and covered the long history of CIA meddling in foreign elections. A February 17, 2018, article, titled, "Russia Isn’t the Only One Meddling in …
Continue reading US Meddling in Foreign Elections: A CIA Tradition Since 1948
Jeffrey Sterling, the case officer for the CIA’s covert “Operation Merlin,” who was convicted in May 2015 for allegedly revealing details of that operation to James Risen of the New York Times, was released from prison in January after serving more than two years of a 42-month sentence. He had been tried and convicted on …
Continue reading How ‘Operation Merlin’ Poisoned U.S. Intelligence on Iran
Americans like to think of their country as different from those run by military regimes. They are only fooling themselves. Ever since the federal government was converted into a national-security state after World War II (without a constitutional amendment authorizing the conversion), it has been the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA that have run …
Once upon a time in the United States there was a general perception that organizations like the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were both apolitical and high-minded, existing only to calmly and professionally promote the safety and security of the nation. Directors of both organizations often retired quietly without …
